Nothing to Devour

by Glen Hirshberg

  “Jess, hang on, I have to—”

  “I need you,” Jess said, and Kaylene turned.

  Jess was by the back sliding door, a nail dangling from one corner of her lips like a cigarette, her shapeless sweater draping her body. The lines of light sneaking between the wooden boards streaked her face. She had a hammer in one hand, and with the other was pressing another board diagonally into place.

  In a daze, Kaylene floated back downstairs past Joel and Benny. Leaning her bat against the wall, she reached out to hold the board in place. But instead of placing the nail, Jess spit it onto the floor, grabbed Kaylene’s wrist, and tugged her around so they were facing each other.

  “Kaylene,” said Jess, ice-eyes brimming. “Thank you for teaching Rebecca how to scream.”

  If anything, Jess’s stare right that second felt even more mesmerizing than Sophie’s.

  “Jess…”

  “I mean it.”

  “Well … no problem.”

  Jess actually grinned for a second.

  From across the room, where he was chiseling a sharper point onto some implement or other, Joel called, “Also, Kaylene? Thanks for being the first one of us to remember how to play anything, period. And why we should bother.”

  What the fuck is this? Kaylene was thinking. And why can’t we do it more often?

  Letting her board drop, Kaylene stepped back, reached blindly for the counter, and turned just in time to see Rebecca hurry into the room. At least Rebecca didn’t thank her for anything. But she did circle around, hook Kaylene’s arm, and spin her into a single, mad twirl. For one moment—for the first time in the five-plus years they’d spent on this island—the Stockade felt like the Crisis Center at UNH-D. Like human curling and strawberry Twinkies and being useful in the world amid the madness of the world.

  Like being in the world, period.

  Abruptly, Rebecca let go and whipped her gaze around the room. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Where is she?”

  At first, Kaylene had no idea which she Rebecca meant. Neither, apparently, did her housemates, because Jess’s first response was, “Uhh, remember? Think maybe five minutes back. All that brouhaha with the boiling oil and the tire chains and—”

  “Emilia,” said Rebecca.

  Even then, it took everyone but Jess a moment to understand. Then they were all whirling, searching. The hairs on Kaylene’s arms and neck snapped to attention yet again, or, rather, she became aware of them again. As far as she knew, they had never once stood down—had in fact hardened into quills and ossified—since her first glimpse of the thing in the hat stepping out of the shade of Halfmoon Lake woods on the morning she kissed Jack. On the last day of his life.

  “Here,” came a quiet voice from all the way across the living room.

  She was huddled in the corner, hooded in blankets with her knees to her chest and only her face and a few straggles of curly black hair visible. If Rebecca hadn’t remembered, Kaylene thought, that woman could have stayed in that corner forever, or until nightfall, and then gone anywhere. Slipped out the boarded-up back, or up the stairs into Rebecca’s room.

  “Good,” said Rebecca. “You scared us. You okay?”

  The woman nodded.

  “All right. You stay there.”

  “Planning to,” said Emilia, and slowly, carefully, let the topmost red blanket slide away from her arm. In her coiled fist, she held the longest chopping knife in the house.

  Given their lives, that sight reassured everyone. Joel grinned. Jess said, “Excellent. Carry on.”

  They went back to their business, and Kaylene turned to ask Rebecca straight out what she’d been doing locked away with Sophie, and was surprised to find her friend already across the room, headed right back upstairs. She started to call after her, thought better of it, glanced down at the countertop where she’d left her googly-eyed bat.

  It wasn’t there.

  Goddamnit, Rebecca, she thought. Are you taking this all on yourself? Again?

  Without a word to Jess, Benny, Emilia, or Joel, Kaylene moved to the stairs. No one said anything to her, either. The door to Rebecca’s room was closed. Halfway to the landing, Kaylene stopped, held the rail, held still, and listened, while the world, as usual, tipped underneath her, threatening to drop away like a rope bridge she could never seem to get off.

  Was it like this, she wondered, for people who never met monsters? Did just being yourself and alive always feel this way, for everyone? As ephemeral as light?

  And … Jesus … did it feel that way to Sophie? What had that thing been doing for the last five years? What were Sophie and Rebecca discussing now? Assuming Rebecca hadn’t already gone ahead and killed her some more?

  Kaylene took three quick steps and reached the landing. She could hear murmuring in Rebecca’s room, but she had to tiptoe all the way to the door and crouch at the keyhole to hear actual words.

  First, Sophie’s: “Yes. Right. So. How do you choose your meat, then?”

  “It isn’t the same,” Rebecca said, in something very like her old, careful Crisis Center voice. But a little meaner, or maybe more afraid.

  “You’re right,” said Sophie. “It isn’t. I actually face the reality of what I’m doing.”

  “Oh, God, you’re going to make the hunting argument? I-kill-my-own-meat-and-respect-it, so—”

  “I’ll tell you what I don’t do. I don’t do it for fun. Which, yes, put your pointy finger down, that doesn’t mean I don’t have fun sometimes. I have fun as often as possible, actually. Because honestly, otherwise, why bother? With anything?”

  “I don’t even know how to—”

  “I also do it—”

  “Do what? Say it?”

  “Kill someone. Happy now? And by the way, I kill so much less than I think you think. So much less than I thought I could bear, or than I was told I’d have to. I never do it out of vengeance; I don’t discriminate by color or gender identity or sexual preference; I sure as hell don’t do it because I’m attracted to someone, although, I admit, that does turn out to be a fringe benefit of … this. Of my condition. Or maybe that’s always been me, and I’m just cool like that. Because the truth is, everyone’s kind of attractive to me, now. All the time. Even you, little cutie, sitting there so panicky-mad and sad with your hands clenched like that and your face all—”

  “Please stop,” Rebecca said, and Kaylene wanted to hurl herself through the door, grab Rebecca, tip Sophie out the window, and flee this place. But she stayed put, let Rebecca do her thing.

  “Okay, I’ll stop. It really is true, though. I am attracted to practically every single person I meet. I have no idea what that’s about. Skin with sunlight in it, maybe? Eyes with fear in them? Or maybe doubt? Vulnerability? I’ve given up trying to analyze. I’ve never been the analyzing kind. I try just to enjoy.”

  This time, Rebecca barely managed a croak. “I don’t want you to analyze. I want you to count. If I’d killed you then … in Halfmoon Lake woods … how many people would that have saved?”

  There was a brief, terrible silence. As if Sophie were actually counting. But what she said was, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetie. You did try.”

  “I wasn’t trying. Believe it or not, I really wasn’t. I was killing him. It. The Hat Freak. You were just…”

  “In the wrong face at the wrong time?”

  Rebecca let out a single, explosive gasp, which mercifully covered Kaylene’s. But not Sophie’s laughter.

  “My God,” Rebecca hissed. “You really are…”

  “A funny, funny gal?”

  “… a total monster.”

  “Right, Rebecca. I’m just so completely different from you. Actually, hold on, shut up, I’ll give it to you, we are pretty different. Natalie and I were pretty different, too. Kind of like Jess and Benny are totally different. And Jess and Natalie, come to think of it. How about you and your long-haired bandmate with the zebras-on-drugs dresses? You and she are pretty different. Hey. Easy now. Put that b
at back in your lap, sweetheart.”

  Another silence. In the midst of it, Kaylene sensed movement below her, not quite at the foot of the stairs and not exactly in the kitchen or living room, either. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the door long enough to turn around and look.

  Rebecca had picked out the word that shouldn’t have been in that last Sophie-monologue, and now she made the leap that Kaylene should have. Her voice came out almost shy—or all the way shy—which made Kaylene want to throw open the door and hug her. But she was too busy shuddering.

  “Bandmate.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So you’ve seen us play.”

  Astonishingly—absurdly—Sophie burst out singing, in near-perfect Kaylene-ese: “With your face to the dark and your fists in my hands…”

  Rocking backward, Kaylene had to grab for the doorframe to stay standing. She was sure she’d made too much noise even before she realized her mouth had come open, that she was apparently either about to laugh or else shout Rebecca’s harmony-echo (“fists in my hands!”). Somehow, she smashed her lips together and caught her own voice in her teeth.

  “Stop it,” Rebecca said.

  “Your wish is NO ONE’s…”

  “Stop!”

  “Your wish is NO ONE’s…”

  “Please.”

  “‘… command.’ Okay, okay, stop looking like that, didn’t anyone warn you your face could freeze that way?”

  For a while, the only sound was Sophie laughing. Kaylene held the doorframe, held still, and came perilously close to laughing with her.

  “You’ve seen us play,” Rebecca murmured.

  “I’m your number one fan.”

  “God help us.”

  “In fact, it’s possible that I’ve seen almost every single show you little Sock Puppets have ever played. I’m your freaking groupie, except for the getting-one-or-both-of-you-in-bed part. Although, hey, come to think of it, look at us now! We’re practically—”

  “Stop,” Rebecca snapped, sharp as a snare-hit, with an accompanying rattle of regret or something else. “Okay? Sophie, just … stop.”

  More silence, or near-silence. Silence with Sophie softly humming. Then something changed. Kaylene didn’t have to be in the room to sense it. She couldn’t have said what signaled her; she just knew.

  “Right,” said Sophie. “Fun time’s over.” Bedsprings creaked, as though Sophie had sat up or rolled up on her side. Surely, she couldn’t have done either with chains around her? “Look. Rebecca. You crimped-up little thunderbolt. When I need to eat, I eat. The way all living things do. I select at random, and I actually make it a point—a rule—not to inflict pain, if possible. I almost never inflict pain.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “The opposite, in fact. You know what? When your end comes, Mademoiselle Sock Puppet, I have a feeling it won’t be anywhere near as pleasant.”

  When Rebecca spoke next, she was whispering. That only happened, Kaylene knew, when she was near tears. There was no way Rebecca would let herself cry in front of Sophie. Kaylene knew her too well. “My God, Sophie. You’re the worst thing in the world: a monster with a sense of self-justification.”

  “What, like a terrorist? I have no jihad, little girl. Unlike my former surrogate mom down there, and unlike you, too, judging by the boiling oil you just threw in my face and the bat you’re considering bludgeoning me with. Unlike cops who kill black kids—have you guys even heard about all that, shut up here on your island?—or the fuckwad rednecks I grew up with hunting gays in alleys and truck-stop bathrooms. I have no cause. I just want to live. Somehow, for some reason I really can’t figure, in spite of every fucking thing life has given me … I want to live.”

  The ensuing quiet was also one Kaylene knew well. Hearing it now filled her with fleeting but furious affection; it was the sound of Rebecca, listening.

  “You said it yourself,” Rebecca finally said. “The Whistler told you. Remember? That’s what you told me on the day we met, when I found you in Jess’s attic. You told me he said that inevitably, out of necessity—to live—you and Natalie would detach from human feelings. From everything you’d ever felt. That you’d become monsters whether you wanted or meant to or not.”

  “Yeah,” said Sophie. “But unlike you … and also unlike my late, lamented, stupid idiot best friend, who should still be here with me, if only so we could shriek your surprisingly not-idiot songs back in your face … it actually occurred to me to consider the source.”

  “He knew a lot more about it than you did, at the time. Or do now. He had a lot more experience, I kind of think.”

  “Or else he was an asshole. Born and killed and raised. And smashed flat, by you.”

  “With my shovel.”

  “While he was being devoured by me.”

  Jesus Christ, were they joking, now? It half sounded as though they might slap hands. Or would have, if Sophie’s weren’t chained to the bed.

  Yet again, Kaylene reached for the doorknob. It was time to get in there and help Rebecca finish this. Whatever that meant. Or else ask Sophie to join the band. In her mouth, for no reason, she tasted her mother’s sesame bao and Mrs. Starkey’s Goose Island Night Stalkers and Benny’s waffles. In her ears and on her lips, she had the song Rebecca and Sophie had been singing. One Kaylene had written.

  “Your wish is no one’s … your wish is NO ONE’s … command…”

  “How about this, then?” Sophie said, as Kaylene turned the knob. “Can you face it, girlie? Because I face it every night. I own it. I am the truck you don’t see coming, or the cancer that’s been in you since before you were born. I’m the plane crash the statistics say you have almost no chance of being in, and those statistics don’t lie. I’m lightning from a clear sky. Just one of those thousand-million things you’re unlikely ever to meet. Except you’re all going to meet something.”

  “Except you.”

  “Except me? I already met it. I’m an even rarer statistical anomaly. I got back up.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Well, yeah. I suppose that’s right.”

  “But I didn’t start killing afterward.”

  “Nope. You just keep eating.” And then, for the first time in this whole exchange, Sophie’s voice went flat. All the way dead. “And then there’s this: only one person in this room has ever tried to hurt the other. And she’s done it twice.”

  Kaylene noted the threat. In fact, she suspected she was tracking it far more clearly than Rebecca, if only because she’d heard it before. It was Kaylene, after all, who had actually had the Whistler’s hands on her throat and his corpse-eyes inside her. She had her shoulder to Rebecca’s door to burst into the room when she heard the sound behind her again.

  That noise, downstairs. Little more than a rustle, really. Footstep on balding carpet. A quieter, heavier step than any step she knew.

  Get in the room, something screamed inside her. Don’t turn around! But she had already turned.

  Just like that, it was over.

  The woman down there was mostly shadow, only now detaching from the shadows around Joel’s bedroom door. She would have been indistinguishable from the surrounding dark except for her eyes, which tore into Kaylene’s brain and lodged like grappling hooks.

  She felt—really, watched, she hardly felt a thing—her body stumble away from Rebecca’s door, half fall down the stairs. She would have fallen, except those eyes wouldn’t let her. They propped her up as they dragged her closer, set her burrowing through the air like one of her beloved little Dig-Dugs, helpless to do anything but march, singing, to its own cataclysm.

  Like everything alive! she thought, almost dreamed as she lurched another step. The thought proved strangely comforting. I am the byproduct of cataclysm, instantly and permanently dispersing from the second I awoke. I am living aftermath, and always have been.

  Living is aftermath.

  For the sake of fighting, she fought. It really was worth fighting for, after a
ll; Sophie had that much right, for sure. Such good aftermath, Kaylene thought. Every agonizing second of it. That was what finally set tears boiling out of her eyes, which she couldn’t even blink away because the shadow-thing in the hall wouldn’t let her. At one point she did get one hand to the banister. That didn’t slow her progress any, but the touch of wood seemed to trigger her other senses, awaken her hearing. There was Jess’s voice, over by the boarded-up patio door (which would only serve to trap them now that the monsters had gotten in). Benny’s voice, too. Both of them—oh, God—singing. With each other. To each other.

  “On the Good Ship Lollipop”? That’s what Jess and Benny sing to each other? That’s the song I go out to?

  That song, and Jess’s laughter. Somehow, down there—with her grandson in the woods, her first husband gone, her daughter gone, the monsters massing yet again all around her—Jess had found one more thing to make her laugh, momentarily. She’d even found someone to do that with.

  A bunch of someones, actually. Including me, Kaylene thought, as her feet came off the stairs, hit flat floor. No one turned. No one saw.

  The woman in the hall—woman-shaped thing with supernovas for eyes, towering without being tall, too solid somehow to be woman, not aftermath but the cataclysm itself—was speaking. Or at least, she was moving her black hole of a mouth, which sucked sound in rather than pushed it out. Kaylene could see words forming and understood perfectly.

  Where is she? the woman was saying, soundlessly, over and over, without even breathing. The words a stream of light with nothing to break or slow or soften them. Where is she? Whereisshewhereisshewhereisshe?

  The words filled Kaylene’s mind, the part that wasn’t screaming. Then other voices rose. One was her mother’s, and it wasn’t asking questions.

  I’m coming, Kaylene, her mother said. I’m coming. I’m coming.

  Too late, Kaylene thought, even sang. Warm bao. Sock Puppet. Jack and the ’Lenes. Dig-Dug tunnels I dug, weapons I Kaylened, Whistler’s hats I defanged and transformed, shrieks I taught whole rooms full of girls to shriek so they could all shriek together. So she and Rebecca could shriek with them. Become cataclysm. Create. Your wish is no one’s … your wish is no one’s …